Averagely, every person spends one third of his/her lifetime in sleep to recover from the day's exertions and to prepare for the next day's activities. A quality sleep is very important not only to rest the individual's body, but also to enhance the individual's health, and a good pillow that provides proper support to the sleeper is definitely a major factor contributing to the quality sleep. Traditional pillows may provide certain level of head and neck support, but the support may be insufficient and may cause sleeping problems. Deficient support during sleep may give rise to headache, neck pain, back pain and other discomforts of a muscular nature. The pain and tension may further generate sleeping problems, such as increased perspiration during rest, insomnia, restlessness, light sleep, and snoring.
It is known that the human cervical spine is not straight, but forms a lordotic curvature due to the trapezoidal profile of the neck vertebrae. The seven vertebrae of the cervical area of the spine, which are linked through six mobile connections to produce a moderate curve. The optimal position of the human cervical spine is known as the neutral position corresponding to the most anatomically natural position of the cervical spine of a person who is standing upright with correct posture. In the neutral position, the lordotic curve of the cervical spine is maintained such that the lowest degree of stress is placed on the cervical vertebrae and surrounding connective and other tissues to minimize the neck and back pain. Recently, some orthopedic pillows have been developed to provide better supports of a human cervical spine and head with respect to several different rest positions.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,345,401 to Frydman discloses an orthopedic pillow having a contoured top layer, a plurality of supporting layers, each having tongue-and-groove structures to enable the contoured layer to be removably supported by one or more additional supporting layers, as shown in FIG. 1. The orthopedic support pillow that can be customized in terms of height in order to fit an individual's needs and/or preferences without the use of accessory devices such as hook-and-loop, elastic bands, zippers and straps. Also, Frydman's pillow can provide support for the natural contour of the cervical lordosis. Even though the pillow disclosed by Frydman provides head and neck support, the contoured top layer may not be a proper surface to provide shoulder and cheek support to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,707,668 to Kloes, et al. discloses a pillow for relieving pressure on a neck of a user. The pillow includes a body section, a first lobe member integrally bound to the body section and adaptable for supporting a nape of a neck of a user, and a second lobe member integrally bound to the body section and adaptable for supporting a cheek bone and a jaw of the user. The pillow also includes a channel formed in the body section between the first lobe member and the second lobe member, wherein the channel is adaptable for receiving the neck of the user to relieve pressure on the neck of the user, as shown in FIG. 2. Even though Kloes indicates that the pillow may provide support to the user's cheek bone and jaw, the support may be improper due to the arrangement of the channel and lobes, and the shape of the pillow.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,015,640 to Sun discloses an improved multi-position cervical pillow which alone can provide four unique positions, and a novel pillow set thereof with an additional, unattached ancillary pillow pad. The simple construction of the pillow set with a simple adjusting method from the present invention will provide the user an easy control and yield virtually unlimited options for the user to customize the pillow set for his/her personal comfort. However, like Frydman and Kloes, the pillow configuration disclosed by Sun may provide good support of the user's neck and head, but not the user's shoulders and cheeks.
Therefore, there remains a need for a new and improved pillow to provide complete and thorough support for the user to overcome the problems addressed above during sleep and further enhance the user's quality of sleep.